[Remotectrlctr-users] Ings? We don't all see the same things in the same wa

[Corrow <geo...@co...>]

D, and the Three Graces. He was one of the early artists to break
through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly
mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite manner all his
own. The true spirit of beauty dwelt within him, and all that he painted
and designed was graceful in form and beautiful in colour. If, for
instance, you look closely into the designs of the necks of dresses in
his pictures, you will find them delightful to copy and far superior to
the ordinary designs for such things made to-day. In his love of beauty
and his keen appreciation of the new possibilities of painting he was a
true child of the Renaissance, though he had not the joyous nature so
characteristic of the time. Moreover, as I have said, he retained the
old sweet religious spirit, and clothed it with new forms of beauty in
his sacred paintings. There is something pathetic about many of
these--the Virgin, while she nurses the Infant Christ, seems to foresee
all the sorrow in store for her, and but little of the joy. The girl
angels who nestle around her in so many of his pictures, have faces of
exquisite beauty, but in most of them, notwithstanding the fact that
they are evidently painted from Florentine girls of the time, Botticelli
has infused his own personal note of sadness. At the end of the
fifteenth century, when Botticelli was beginning to grow old, great
events took place in Florence. Despite the revival of learning, we are
told by historians that the Church was becoming corrupt and the people
more pleasure-loving and less interested in the religious life. Then it
was that Savonarola, a friar in one of the convents of Florence, all on
fire with enthusiasm for purity and goodness, began to awaken the hearts
of the people with his burning eloquence, and his denunciations of their
worldliness and the deadness of the Church. He prophesied a great
outpouring of the wrath of God, and in particular that the Church would
be purified and renewed after a quick and terrible punishment. The
passion, the conviction, the eloquence of Savonaro